Book Review: Organizing Matters – Two Logics of Trade Union Representation

Abstract

floods or forest fires have shown the limits of small states. For example, the EU has long since set the course for mobile phone broadcast warning systems for direct notification of those affected, of the kind that have long existed in the USA, China and Japan, and are being introduced in France, Italy and Great Britain, while in Germany there is talk of reintroducing sirens. Streeck ignores the fact that some European course-setting can be helpful, whereas a traditional small state such as Belgium remained at the same level of unpreparedness as Germany in the face of the floods. No one seems properly prepared for regularly recurring fires. His alternative concept of a united but not unified Europe, however, suffers from a lack of institutional anchoring and thus follows a German tradition of building castles in the air. The small states would coexist peacefully and harmoniously, he postulates, so that the question seems justified whether there would be any international relations at all. In parallel, he pleads for a Europe of variable geometry or à la carte (p. 390). It can be assumed from this that the KeynesPolanyi state is incompatible with many building blocks of the EU, such as membership of the monetary union with fixed debt and budget deficit limits, and prohibition of capital controls, internal as well as external. In order to implement the desired changes in the EU, not only would considerably higher transfer sums be necessary, but nothing less than an abolition of the Fiscal Pact, the ‘debt brake’ and the ban on capital controls, together with a revival of industrial policy with the possibility of subsidies, the enforcement of the ‘polluter pays’ principle, an increase in the size of the public sector, and crisis resistance and resilience. In this context, why the editors left in footnotes on dumplings and pasta remains unfathomable. It is not least to Streeck’s credit that he has brought blasphemous questions about the EU back into the culture of rational discourse. In any case, pro-Europeans have to answer a few tricky questions that go to the heart of the matter, including many neoliberal ingredients. Why is it that in the USA a state like California can introduce stricter emissions standards, while in the EU it is impossible for a Member State to do the same? Is the EU therefore more neoliberal than the USA or at least the EU internal market more neoliberal than the US internal market? Why do minimum standards in the EU necessarily have to be maximum standards at the same time? In the USA, the car industry quickly adapted to the Californian standards instead of producing different types of cars in each case; in Europe, no one is allowed to lead the way: can Europe still afford this ideological narrow-mindedness in times of accelerated climate change?